We have detected that cookies are not enabled on your browser. Please enable cookies to ensure the proper experience.
Warning: JavaScript is required for some functionalities of this page. Please enable the use of JavaScript in your browser. Log In
Register My Account
Log Out (%1$s)

We have detected that cookies are not enabled on your browser. Please enable cookies to ensure the proper experience.

Warning: JavaScript is required for some functionalities of this page. Please enable the use of JavaScript in your browser.

House auto-abandon after 1 years inactivity * Petition *

Hello, as Tirian-Hammerfist wrote here please clean the trash in the Housing Instances.
There are already three years that I never see somebody in my Housing instance, except my Kinship.
Other Kinship members must buy their Houses in other instances because in our Kinship Housing Instance are no free houses, although there are no soul in them.

The other three (3) free Kinship Houses can't be sold out because there are no Player Houses free, so they are still there empty, about three years.

So please make us a favor and change this ugly situation to auto-abandon after 1 years inactivity on the account.

I a not sure if it'd be ok to comment in here but if you remember, the houses used to be auto-abandoned instead of being locked. One of the reasons they changed it was because the escrow held the decoration items and chest items for only 2 weeks and then destroyed. I doubt this can be handled better now.
Imo, it would be better if they changed the rules of auto-creating new neighbourhoods - if all houses of a certain type are 0, then create new neighbourhood. If I understood correctly, currently the neighbourhood needs to be bought out completely for a new one to appear.

Barrier to this has been how to handle *all* the stuff that they push out of it in a way that a player doesn't come back and have it mostly deleted after the 1 year auto-move.

Secondarily I don't understand why they can't open up more housing more often.
I'm sure it's about data budget, people only buying kin houses and creating more and more new housing instances that are empty. So right now they have a balance. I heard someone say don't go to a big server because you won't be able to get a house. That shouldn't even be a consideration by players really.

I would also like to see it be more feasible for an entire kin to move into a housing area. Again technical features to balance with priorities but it has been a hot button for years.

PS - One reason given for the original change from abandonment to permanent foreclosure is US Military who are gone for months on end. I don't really think that reason holds water so much any more (due to more freedom of access to internet while on assignment).

Firstly they will not read this as petitions violate forum rules. Secondly reimplementing auto abandon would cost turbine potential players some of which are in the military so I dont think they would do it anyways.

One year might be a bit short. As stated above, a lot of military guys played and playing the game.

However, it would be reasonable if it had a VIP-block in there somehow.
In other words: anyone can rent a house regardless of account status but unless the account at some point is or has been VIP, the house becomes available after 1-2 months of unpaid rent.

Regarding potential problems caused by players returning to abandoned houses, the ugly solution is to never auto-abandon, a better one is to create a new housing instance at the end of the list and move inactive players into it.[1] This would create a full instance worth of houses spread among existing neighborhoods so people can move into homes in neighborhoods that are neither empty nor dead.[2]

As soon as their are no houses of a given size available, repeat for another instance worth of houses.

Optional: Hide all the Zig instances from the list unless a player owns a home in it, and don't use a sequence for %1. (No reason to advertise how many people have abandoned the game, right?)

I suppose if someone does return and want their address back in a live neighborhood there should be a waiting-list system for them to get the next available instance of it; A system to get their exact address in their old neighborhood back is probably overkill. I think this much more fair than a purely time-based system and least likely to have anyone complain.

[1] I mean move everything, decorations, layout, chests, etc. Same address, different neighborhood.
[2] Maybe some of the newly available addresses will be in mostly abandoned neighborhoods, people who don't care about that can buy them anyway, and the life will eventually follow them in.
[x] Heck, now that I think about it, there could be a waiting-list for unkept homes too, for folks who do want to get into a particular neighborhood. And the wait-list could factor into the move decision if they are over two-years unpaid.

Some people doesn't really understand the primary reason.
The primary reason is to clean the trash in the running/existing housing instances, to give the possibility to be rent from active players, in most of the cases from kinship members which most of them own houses in the housing instance and where is the Kinship House too.

That many Lotro players are in the US-Army.....sorry but that's not a reason to keep thousand of trash houses, only because they can not login once in a year. I don't thing that they are so many.

The escrow held the decoration items and chest items for two weeks. Sorry but these items has a much more value as the house self.
Just think about the good old trophies such Colnor, Skybreaker and many others or many Class items. What is 15-17 Gold compared to this old trophies values?

Grab 3 Frothing Road if you can. It's a regular house, so it has less space than a deluxe, but it sits on its own little island. If I hadn't felt the need to have the extra housing chest and the extra decoration spots, I'd have locked down a 3 Frothing Road the moment my transfer to E went through a few years ago.

Firstly they will not read this as petitions violate forum rules. Secondly reimplementing auto abandon would cost turbine potential players some of which are in the military so I dont think they would do it anyways.

I don't think that petitions violate forums rules, but I do believe that Sapience has stated that forum petitions are essentially pointless. (I'm paraphrasing, as I can't recall the exact quote.)